The present invention relates to adding network services to a system, and more particularly, to securely adding network services to a system such as an embedded system through virtualization.
Systems builders, particularly builders of complex digital systems such as network switches, network controllers, access points, and other digital infrastructure systems, often wish to augment the capabilities of their products.
One way to do this is to integrate third party software into the system to provide additional capabilities. For the systems builder, this approach offers several advantages. It can reduce research and development time by integrating already existing software into a product, and possibly in areas where the systems builder does not have the same level of expertise.
Such integration of third party software also poses significant problems. Such integration usually entails retargeting the third party software to a different system than that on which it normally operates; this requires access to source code. The third party developer may not wish to provide access to source code, or the systems builder may not be able to meet the financial expectations of the third party developer to gain source code access.
Even if the systems builder can gain access to source code, that code must be ported and made operational in the systems builder's target environment. A number of factors may collude to make such a port exciting. The third party developer may not be willing or able to provide detailed technical support for such a port, or the systems builder may not be willing to pay the developer for the support required. Additionally, the third party code may not have been written with porting in mind, may contain significant dependencies on the system/architecture for which it was developed, and may not be completely documented.
Once a port has been accomplished, additional difficulties are still present. Does the ported third party code play well with the remainder of the system? When issues such as bugs are discovered with the service added by the ported third party code, are the bugs in the third party service, or were they introduced by the porting effort? How are upgrades and bug fixes to the third party service to be handled?